Every year on Dec 1st, I pull out the box containing over 40 of my cherished Metal Christmas CD’s. This year I decided to review a few more for Metal-Rules. Please enjoy all of this 12 days of Christmas Metal album review feature…, plus one evil bonus review! Who says Christmas can’t be Metal?

The good people at Razor & Tie Records know a good thing when they see it. The Hard Rock Christmas thing is a great way to combine a couple of worlds (Christmas and Rock) and probably make it lucrative by appealing to the rockers and to the novelty sense of it all. Right around the same time as the Twisted Sister Christmas album, Razor & Tie also released this compilation of glam/Hard rock bands doing Christmas tunes. It is almost like a set, a companion (in spirit) to A TWISTED CHRISTMAS.

MONSTER BALLADS CHRISTMAS is pretty budget in terms of presentation, I think I got mine in a Wal-Mart bargain bin, and there are no lyrics, or pictures or liner notes, just an ad for the Twisted Sister Christmas album and DVD! The CD consists of 15 songs, cover tunes of Christmas classics. The album title is a bit misleading as some of these aren’t really ‘ballads’ per se, but many of them are quite mellow. Skid Row kicks it off with a rockin’ version of ‘Jingle Bells’ and all the usual suspects are there doing the predictable songs. Queensryche does a lovely version of ‘White Christmas’, as Geoff Tate’s voice can make any song even better. Twisted Sister do a decent version of ‘I’ll be Home for Christmas’ with Dee snider doing a duet with Lita Ford. Danger Danger do a funny original cut called, ‘Naughty Naughty Christmas’ which is the twin brother of the rare Ted Poley comedy christmas classic, ‘A Letter To Santa From a Horny 12 year old Boy’. I like how they have a tongue in check approach and a nice reference to their hit ‘Naughty Naughty’. Another highlight for me is Dokken’s surprisingly heavy version of ‘Santa Claus Is Coming to Town’. Dokken fans will recognize and appreciate how they work a familiar opening riff from 1987’s BACK FOR THE ATTACK into the introduction before hitting the song proper.

MONSTER BALLADS XMAS gets heavier rotation in December than some of the other collections and it is fun throwback for fans of melodic Hard Rock and Heavy Metal.